It took a makeover to get Columbus his holiday

Before the Civil War, Christopher Columbus wasn't considered a hero. He wasn't even viewed as a good navigator.

He was, after all, headed to Asia.

The Italian explorer, who has been called the continent's first slave trader, stubbornly held on to inaccurate ideas about the world's circumference. He was returned to Spain in chains, was stripped of his titles and held for atrocities against native inhabitants.

He remained a controversial figure in spite of the fact that his voyages also spurred permanent contact between the Americas and Europe, forever changed the world and resulted in the rise of mestizoz, people of mixed European and indigenous ancestry.

His overhaul is a fascinating story.

Teresa Van Hoy, O'Connor Chair for the History of Hispanic Texas and the Southwest at St. Mary's University, says his rebranding was born of anti-immigrant hysteria.

At the time, Italians were among the nation's newest immigrants and were victims of anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic resentment. Van Hoy said they were “blamed for the economic downtown, labor agitation, the unsightliness of slums and drunkenness.”

Sound familiar?

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But Italian-American leaders, especially the Knights of Columbus, saw in Columbus a means to an end and recast him as a hero who “discovered” America and thus was quintessentially American — like them.

In this scenario, Columbus even gets credit for leading the charge against the world-is-flat crowd, an idea long before discredited.

“For the 400th anniversary of the discovering, if you will, Oct. 12, 1892, the Knights of Columbus built a statue of him in (New York's) Columbus Circle,” Van Hoy says.

While the Spanish conquest was an invasion, and what Columbus oversaw was genocide, the idea of conquest was still resonating. “In the 1890s, after the statue is erected, we are occupying Cuba for three years, and the Philippines and Puerto Rico are ours as well,” Van Hoy says.

The Columbus myth worked so well it was embedded in history books, unchallenged. Even now, when facts are at our fingertips, it's hard to convince some people otherwise.

The idea that anyone could have discovered a continent occupied by people who'd been there for thousands of years is both preposterous and insulting. It's also a callous world view.

It's even harder to convince some people that Columbus, unlike Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr., for example, isn't worthy of a national holiday. Even if you look at the big picture and the big impact, holidays are for heroes. Latino groups have been working toward one for César Chávez.

“There's a lot of written evidence by Columbus himself to validate his censure,” says Van Hoy, noting he wrote about the ease with which he could control native groups and enslave them. Some of what he recorded can't be published in a family newspaper.

“The danger of holding on to any myth that aggrandizes armed invasion, the conquest of a people, the rape of women, enslavement, the confiscation of wealth,” Van Hoy says, trailing off. “We just know better than that right now. We know the human rights cost. The model has been discredited.”

Columbus Day doesn't get a lot of attention outside of weekend sales here. But we have the Christopher Columbus Italian Society, which puts on the annual spaghetti and meatball dinner.

They're right to be proud of their contributions to U.S. society and local history. In San Antonio, we can agree on celebrating diversity.

But then there's that statue of Columbus, calling him “discoverer of America.”

Van Hoy has heard anecdotes about students learning a more nuanced story around Columbus and learning about Día de la Raza, too, which celebrates mestizaje.

Elaine Ayala has been in the newspaper business for 33 years as a reporter, editor, blogger and columnist. She has worked at six metropolitan dailies, including the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, the Arizona Daily Star, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, the Austin American-Statesman and the El Paso Times

She has worked at the San Antonio Express-News for 16 years. Her Metro column runs on Monday in the Express-News and in its bilingual weekly Conexión. She writes a Latino Life blog about "Latino arts, politics y mas" on MySanAntonio.com. Her minority affairs beat focuses on diversity and ethnic communities.

The San Antonio native graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1979.

Ayala has been involved in several journalism organizations throughout her career, most focused on increasing the number of minorities and women in the U.S. newsroom and raising money for scholarships for students pursuing careers in the media.

She speaks at area schools and community organizations and has served as a mistress of ceremonies for several galas and events. In addition to her newspaper work, she has written for several publications, including Latino magazine, Latino Future magazine, the National Catholic Reporter and a couple of now-defunct magazines.